Director, Producer, Writer

Capetonian Robert Silke is Design Director at Louis Karol, South Africa’s largest firm of architects.

Silke’s award-winning built work (as well as his caustic social commentary) is published in blue-chip design journals Wallpaper*, ARCHIS and OneSmallSeed.

Silke’s first cinema foray, Die Pienk Gevaar, headlined at South Africa’s national Out in Africa Gay & Lesbian Film Festival in 2002 – and was accorded must-see status at New York’s Mix NYC experimental film festival in the same year.

The Satyr of Springbok Heights is Silke’s first full-length feature and embodies his life-long preoccupation with architecture, urbanism and its profoundly-underestimated effect on the lives of ordinary people.

Producer, Cinematographer, Tech-head

Aaron Scheiner

Rural recluse Aaron Scheiner lives in a nest of cables on the outskirts of Cape Town, flies his own aeroplanes, collects property rentals for his family business, and occupies business hours frequenting pawn stores and junk yards - scavenging for good deals on high-end technology.

The marriage of these skills, coupled with experience in the film industry and other fields, has acted as the technological driving force of The Satyr of Springbok Heights.

Aaron: "People tend to overlook the grittier, seedier beauty of Cape Town, it's people, it's architecture and it's darkness. It’s not just a postcard, and I've tried to portray those attributes."

Original Score

Shaun Michau

Shaun is the composer, drummer, spot-writer & musician – and a founder-member of the jazz ensemble Breakfast Included. We were privileged to have Shaun compose and perform our entirely-original score for The Satyr of Springbok, which has already been lauded by BBC television producers as, “Absolutely Brilliant!”

Editor

Dewet van Rooyen

Dewet's Production Company, Mandelbrot Films, provided full HD editing, Dolby sound and post-production facilities – right up to grading and special effects; on a shoe-string budget. Dewet’s remarkable skill and obsessive-compulsive perfectionism, has helped our humble little film to rise far above its station.

Cast

Godfrey Johnson – Fleur du Cap Award-winner, singer, composer, arranger, pianist and television actor ; Whose incredible professionalism and stunning absence of personal ego, made it possible for him to stoop so convincingly to the level of the sad old Bachelor, Wouter Malan.

Victoria Caballaire – Is the most famous and fabulous female impersonator in the entire Mother City (and you can imagine that here she’s up against pretty stiff competition); and Victoria happens to be one of the only drag artists in the world, who can actually sing without lip-synching – having spent her boyhood in none-other-than the Drakensberg Boys Choir. Victoria plays the Spinster Hilda Steyn.

Nicole Franco – The Cape-Town-based international film and television actress, lent her incredible talents (at way below market value) to the flawless performance of the character of Lebanese Tony Nassif, resident of 303 Holyrood.

Nicholas Spagnoletti – is the playwrite, actor and veteran Theatre-Sports performer (who’s been on the project right from inception) who co-wrote parts of the screenplay, and who delivered what critics have already recognized as an admirably-subtle and solid performance of one of the most difficult roles in the film - Nathan Golding.

Lin Sampson (of The Sunday Times); the razor-tongued, caustic social commentator who wrote the original story about a block of flats - which became the inspiration for this screenplay.

John Caviggia; Cultural Historian, Lecturer in the Dramatic Arts at UCT, Fine Music Radio personality and stage actor, who not only acted, but (like Lin Sampson) actually adlibbed his own script as he went along.

Professor Emeritus Fabio Todeschini is a doyen of South African architectural academia. Fabio was not required to act per se, but rather to speak truthfully and passionately about architecture, urbanism and to speak of what is one of the greatest taboos among modern architects ; to attempt to discern and define (however clumsy and embarrassing it is for an architect to do so) the essence of beauty in architectural form-making.